When the news came through that Manchester Marathon had decided to postpone the event I was truly gutted.
The final parts of my training had all gone well and I was feeling on target to achieve the goals that I had set for myself.
One of my 20 mile training runs had only been 3 seconds per kilometre slower than my target pace and I hadn’t been pushing. I also managed to achieve a PB over 6 miles 24 hours later.
As well as attempting to go under the 3 hour mark I was also hoping to use the time for other things in the future. It could of possibly been good enough for Good For Age at next years London Marathon but the main thing I had been looking at was trying to get a Boston Qualifying time. This was part of a much bigger plan to be able to one day complete all 6 of the major marathons.
It felt like the whole of this multi year plan had fallen apart.
I know part of this sounds selfish that all I could think about was myself but it was just the initial reaction. I understand that more important things are happening. Peoples plans that are far more important than mine are being disrupted and obviously peoples health is at stake.
To try and get myself out of my self pity I started to look at the positives that have come from the training block.
I have already managed to improve my PB over both 6 and 7 mile distances. I don’t think this would have been possible without all the miles that I was putting in to get ready to run a marathon.
I had also managed to find an alternative 20 mile race after Ashby had cancelled so hopefully that will still be on and I can get another PB there. (Gloucester 20 blog)
Also I still have Berlin in the autumn assuming that everything is back to some level of normality by then. This was my main marathon for the year as it is one of the majors. It is also for charity so it is helping others.
As long as I can stay fit and healthy then this should only put a years delay on the plan. Getting a time in Berlin will mean I can look at Boston in 2022.
Hopefully some of the spring and summer races will still go ahead and I can look to improve my times over multiple distances using the fitness that I have generated through this training block.
The last few runs of this block had started to feel like ones that I had to do and not ones that I wanted to do. Hopefully with the pressure of the marathon taken away I can now get back to enjoying my running.
This is the best I can do to keep myself in a good mind set at the moment. Just writing these things down is useful.
On the whole though I am still gutted.
markrepton26.2 